The fallen woman

The young woman with the baby walked over to the petrol bowsers and tore white paper from a dispenser. The middle-aged woman wrapped it around the fallen woman’s hand: around a ring or two. There wasn’t too much blood now. More on the footpath than on her soft skin.

The full story was published in The Big Issue, 393, 8-21 November 2011, with an illustration by Michelle Caplan.